Retail Media by Vertical in 2026: How Grocery, Pharmacy, Food Delivery, Beauty and In-Store Retailers Earn

Last updated: October 2026 · Reviewed by Kunal Damgude, Growth and Product Marketing Manager at Osmos

Retail media earns differently in every vertical because purchase frequency, basket size, margin and the path to purchase decide which ad formats brands fund and which result they renew on. Grocery runs on high-frequency search and listing ads backed by loyalty data; pharmacy on health-intent search plus screens where customers wait; beauty and fashion on video, custom formats and offsite reach; food delivery on onsite listings and offsite extension; and physical stores on screens and analog placements priced by store and by day.

Osmos is a white-label retail media operating system for retailers and marketplaces. Its modular apps for onsite, offsite and in-store ads sit over your existing stack, so you can break your monetisation ceiling faster without rebuilding it.

Series context. This is the pillar guide for the Osmos Vertical Deep Dives series. For depth on a single channel or category, read the guides to in-store digital screens and DOOH, how retailers monetize in-store traffic, grocery in-store ad revenue and brand ROI, retail media for beauty retailers, food delivery retail media ads and food delivery retail media monetization.

How does retail media differ by vertical?

Retail media by vertical is the practice of shaping a retailer's ad formats, pricing, targeting and reporting to the economics of the category its shoppers buy in. Osmos builds the onsite, offsite and in-store apps a retailer uses to do that, so a grocer, a pharmacy chain and a fashion marketplace can each run the format mix their category needs on one system, under their own brand.

Retail media is advertising that a retailer or marketplace offers to brands on its own properties and audiences: onsite placements on its site and app, offsite placements that carry its first-party audiences to external channels, and in-store placements across its physical estate. It is the largest and oldest part of commerce media, the wider category that also covers delivery apps, travel platforms and payment networks.

A retail vertical is a product category with its own shopping pattern, such as grocery, pharmacy and health, beauty, fashion, food delivery, or electronics and home improvement. "Vertical retailer" also has an older meaning in the trade: a retailer that designs, makes and retails its own products, as many fashion chains do. Both senses matter in retail media, because a multi-brand retailer can offer placements to every brand it stocks, while a vertically integrated retailer has fewer outside brands on the shelf and usually builds its network around non-endemic advertisers and its own product launches.

Osmos sorts the channel decision for each vertical on these variables:

• Purchase frequency sets how much search and listing inventory a retailer has, and how quickly a campaign shows a result a brand can read.
• Basket size and margin set the return a brand needs before it renews, and how much it will spend on creative-led formats such as video and custom units.
• Path to purchase decides whether the conversion lands in the same session, the same store trip, or weeks later across channels, which decides how the retailer proves results.
• Physical estate decides whether in-store media is a channel at all. A grocer with stores can run it, and a delivery app runs onsite and offsite alone.

Beauty. Beauty retailers earn most from formats that show a product in use: shoppable video for application and routines, display for launches, and Product Ads as the always-on floor under search. The loyalty base is the targeting layer, and Sensor Tower's impression data on Sephora shows how far the category's specialist networks now lean on offsite reach. Beauty retailers on Osmos run shoppable Video Ads with inline add-to-cart beside Product Ads, and the Osmos guide to retail media for beauty retailers covers the loyalty closed loop in depth.

Fashion and apparel. Fashion shoppers buy less often and at higher order values, so a fashion retailer's inventory is worth most around drops, collections and seasonal peaks. Editorial-style custom formats and sponsored video lead on the retailer's own site and app, with offsite social and CTV for reach and Product Ads underneath for catalogue depth. A conversion can land weeks after first exposure, so brands need a measurement window they can set for each drop. Zalando's decade of ZMS partnerships shows that a fashion marketplace can build a brand-funded media business on a few high-value purchases a year. Osmos Ad Packages bundle inventory and audiences across formats into one booking, which fits a launch calendar, and the Osmos guide to premium retail media ad packages covers how to price them.

Electronics, home improvement and DIY. These categories run on long consideration and specification-led search, so a retailer's search results, comparison pages and project content (how-to guides, installer pages) form the core inventory, and stores add aisle placements booked by store and week. Home Depot and Lowe's both grew observed impression volume sharply in 2026, a measure of how much shopper attention their networks now offer to brands; ad revenue is a separate measure and needs its own source. Osmos runs the same Product Ads, display and in-store apps for specialty retailers as for grocers, so a home improvement chain can price an aisle screen and a search placement in one booking.

Which advertising platforms stand out in omnichannel grocery product advertising?

A grocery retailer building its own network compares technology platforms such as Osmos, Criteo, Topsort, Koddi and Kevel, and competes with retailer-owned networks led by Walmart Connect, Kroger Precision Marketing, Instacart and Amazon. A grocery retailer choosing infrastructure needs one that runs onsite, offsite and in-store retail media under its own brand while it keeps the shopper relationship and the margin.

A grocery network needs onsite, offsite and in-store working together, because a shopper builds a basket in the app, sees the same brand again on social or video, and finishes the week's shop in a store, and a brand wants one report that follows that path from app to store. A grocer that runs each surface on a different system ends up with three reports that each claim the same sale.

Instacart's Carrot Ads and Epsilon Retail Media, which now contains CitrusAd, also appear on grocery shortlists. A grocer comparing them should work from each company's current product materials and named customer stories, which is the basis for the Osmos, Criteo, Topsort, Koddi and Kevel rows in the table.

Which platforms offer product ad placements within grocery shopping apps?

Retailer-owned networks such as Instacart, Walmart Connect and Kroger Precision Marketing offer product ad placements inside their own grocery apps, and a grocer that wants the same inside its own app licenses a platform such as Osmos, Criteo, Topsort, Koddi or Kevel. Search placements are the core product of each of them, so each also offers onsite search ads for grocery ecommerce. On Osmos the unit is Product Ads: sponsored listings built from the grocer's catalog and ranked on 40+ behavioral signals, so a brand launches in one click without picking SKUs by hand.

Which omnichannel grocery advertising platforms are underrated?

Independent multi-channel platforms are the most underrated option in grocery: a platform the grocer runs under its own brand keeps the brand relationships, the shopper data and the pricing with the grocer, on infrastructure that is already proven. Many grocers still leave the store estate out of the network, even though screens, end caps and chillers carry brand attention every day. Osmos runs that in-store inventory on the same system as onsite and offsite, so a grocer can add stores without a second vendor.

How should a grocer compare self-serve retail media platforms?

A grocer should compare self-serve platforms on how fast a small brand gets its first campaign live, whether the report reads without training, and how the platform handles a catalog with frequent out-of-stocks. Brands now score networks on self-service: the Path to Purchase Institute added it as a rating dimension in its 2026 network ratings (P2PI, Jan 2026). In a live demo, ask each vendor to create a campaign, fund it from a wallet and show the first report. Osmos Orchestration includes Brand Self Serve, which puts brand-facing ad buying on top of the grocer's existing ad server, and Wallets and Billing, which reconciles brand wallets, MDF and incentives against real delivery.

Which retail media stack suits a grocer's first-party data and high-SKU catalog?

The right stack for a grocer with strong first-party data and a large catalog targets on the grocer's own purchase, browsing and store data without third-party cookies, and keeps the auction relevant across tens of thousands of SKUs by ranking listings on shopper context as well as bid, distancing same-brand products from each other and pausing out-of-stock items automatically. Osmos Product Ads target on purchase history, browsing, category affinity, geography, store and keywords, all retailer-owned, and report at order level back to SKU, category and keyword.

How do grocery retailers earn from retail media?

Grocery retailers earn most of their retail media revenue from search and listing ads bought by brands they already stock, then extend those brand budgets offsite and into their stores. Weekly trips give a grocer more search inventory than almost any other category, and a loyalty program ties that inventory to purchase data brands cannot get elsewhere.

Kroger and Walmart both grew their ad businesses in 2026. A Kroger spokesperson told Modern Retail that Kroger Precision Marketing grew on higher onsite customer traffic and new opportunities such as shopping assistant ads and collaborations across social media and programmatic advertising, and Kroger CEO Greg Foran said media monetization grew 88 basis points over the past year (Modern Retail, Sep 2026). Drew Cashmore, chief strategy officer at retail media software company Vantage and a former Walmart Connect leader who worked with Foran to build that network, described what Foran pushed for there, closer links between merchandising, media, operations and marketing:

"The connectivity between those key functions was a catalyst for growth."

At Walmart, global advertising grew 38% in the quarter ended July 2026, a figure that includes VIZIO; Walmart Connect in the US grew 43% excluding VIZIO, and Walmart's international advertising business grew 20%, led by Flipkart Ads (Walmart, Aug 2026). A regional grocer grows ad revenue the same way, by opening new placements and new channels on top of the loyal, frequent shopper base it already has.

What a grocer monetises. The product catalog is the foundation of grocery retail media. Listing ads assemble from it (title, image, price, rating, availability), so brands cannot upload creative for them and the quality of the listing is the lever that improves results. Grocery content management, keeping titles, images and stock status accurate across thousands of SKUs, is therefore part of the ad business as well as the shopping experience. On top of the listings, a grocer can offer display and video on category and recipe pages, custom units built into the shopping flow, and placements on order tracking and checkout pages.

How grocers price it. Many grocers began with fixed-tenancy slots, where a brand books a placement for a category, week or zone at a flat rate. Fixed tenancy is easy to plan and popular with large brands, and its limit is that every slot clears at the booked price however much demand arrives. Grocers now run fixed tenancy for their largest brand partners and an auction underneath for everyone else, so competition for popular keywords sets the price where demand is strongest. The Osmos guide to the retail media business case explains why that margin matters more to a grocer than headline revenue.

Which channels fit. Onsite listings are the anchor, and display, video and custom formats on the same pages carry the creative work brands upload. Offsite extends the grocer's loyalty audiences to social, video and CTV, where brands spend awareness budgets that a grocer's own pages cannot hold. In-store adds screens, chillers, end caps and shelf placements, priced per store and per day and targeted by store and hour, for example breakfast categories in the morning and drinks before a weekend. The Osmos guide to in-store ad revenue for grocers shows how a grocer proves the store channel to brands.

What brands renew on. Grocery brands renew on closed-loop sales: an ad exposure tied to a purchase in the app or, through the loyalty card, in a store. As more of the budget moves to screens and offsite, brands also ask for incrementality, a test that compares exposed shoppers or stores against a holdout to show the sales the ad caused.

Osmos runs the onsite floor of a grocery network on Product Ads, which adjust floor CPCs to demand on every ad slot, apply premium floors on popular slots automatically, and pause out-of-stock products from the auction, so a grocer lifts yield without manual tuning and brands never pay for an item the shopper cannot buy.

How do pharmacy and health retailers earn from retail media?

Pharmacy and health retailers earn from retail media on health-intent search on their sites and apps, from wellness and personal care brands that want to reach health-minded shoppers, and, where they run stores, from screens placed where customers wait for prescriptions. Pharmacy is a high-intent category: a shopper searching for a cold remedy, a vitamin or a skincare product is close to buying, which makes listing ads on a pharmacy site valuable to brands.

Walgreens plans to add digital screens with advertising and educational content in 1,200 of its stores beginning in October, with two large screens per participating store, near the front of the store and in the pharmacy waiting area, through Looma, a network of more than 7,000 screens across 10 banners reaching 13 million unique shoppers a month (Modern Retail, Sep 2026). John Storms, vice president of digital and retail media at Walgreens, said Walgreens is "focusing on better placements, higher-performing placements", in its stores as well as online.

The pharmacy waiting area is a strong example of in-store inventory priced by place and time. A customer waiting for a prescription is in one spot for several minutes, in a health frame of mind, at predictable hours of the day, and a wellness brand will pay for that context without any person-level targeting.

What a pharmacy retailer monetises. Over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, personal care, baby care and wellness devices carry most of the endemic brand demand, and search on a pharmacy site is unusually specific (a condition, an ingredient, a dosage form). Pharmacy networks work under stricter rules on health claims and on how health information may be used, so most build targeting on the category and the search context. Contextual targeting fits that well, and the Osmos guide to contextual vs behavioral targeting in retail media covers where each approach applies.

What Osmos has delivered for a pharmacy retailer. Osmos worked with Apollo 24x7, India's largest omnichannel pharmacy and wellness retailer, on its product listing ad (PLA) program, and in four months, from August to November 2025, Apollo 24x7 saw 200% revenue growth, with budget utilisation rising from 26% to 70% and CPCs rising from Rs 41 to Rs 51.6 (Apollo 24x7 success story). The story credits the result to the changes working together: Osmos opened additional PLA placements across product detail pages, category pages and Track Order pages, introduced structured keyword mapping at category level so ads appeared against more relevant searches, and recommended campaign setup changes that helped advertisers use their budgets. More inventory and better relevance raised competition for placements at the same time, which is why utilisation and CPCs moved together.

Which channels fit. Onsite Product Ads are the anchor for any pharmacy with a site or app. Offsite carries the pharmacy's audiences to social and video for wellness and personal care brands, within the same category-level targeting rules. In-store fits pharmacies with a physical estate: screens and shelf space booked by location and date, scheduled around footfall patterns such as weekday lunch hours.

How do food delivery and quick commerce platforms earn from retail media?

Food delivery and quick commerce platforms earn from retail media onsite and offsite. Onsite covers sponsored listings, sponsored brand units, display and video inside the app; offsite carries the platform's order-based audiences to social, video and the open web. A delivery platform's asset is its customers' ordering habit: they come back several times a month and search with immediate intent.

In Q2 2026, DashPass members placed approximately 75% of DoorDash's total orders in its US grocery and retail categories, and the company's revenue, excluding Deliveroo, grew 24% year over year (DoorDash, Aug 2026). A subscription base of that size is a first-party audience brands value, because its members order often and are known to the platform.

What the top platforms for food advertising have in common. DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart and Grubhub in the US, and Swiggy and Zomato in India, are the delivery platforms food brands and restaurant chains plan against, and each runs its ad business on its own order data. Brands follow order density and repeat behaviour, so a newer or regional platform's reporting has to show both.

What a delivery platform monetises. Sponsored listings in restaurant and grocery search are the anchor format, because placement order decides which restaurant or product gets the order. Sponsored brand units, homepage placements and video carry restaurant chains' and food brands' uploaded creative, and those formats benefit from a weekly creative refresh, because the same customer opens the app several times a week. Day-part pacing matters more here than in any other vertical: lunch, dinner and late-night slots clear at different prices, so auctions should pace budgets separately for each day part.

What QSR means for a delivery platform. QSR, quick-service restaurants, are the chains that make up a large share of delivery orders and a large share of a delivery platform's advertisers. A QSR advertiser judges a platform on the cost to acquire a customer against how often that customer reorders, so a platform that reports repeat-order rate by acquired cohort keeps QSR budgets longer. The Osmos guides to ad formats on delivery apps and monetizing a delivery platform cover the unit economics, cohort reporting and compliance in depth.

Why offsite is the growth channel. Offsite lets a delivery platform earn from its audiences outside its own sessions, which matters because time in a delivery app is short. The Osmos guide to offsite channels for a retail media network compares the channels a platform can add.

Delivery and quick commerce platforms on Osmos run onsite Product Ads and Display Ads in the app and run offsite campaigns on their own channel seats across Google, Meta and TikTok, with the platform setting the markup, while Osmos Guaranteed Outcomes runs the tail and torso of advertisers across those channels, managed to outcomes, so the platform earns that ad revenue without adding ad-ops headcount.

How does in-store retail media earn across verticals?

In-store retail media earns by turning a store estate's screens, audio, shelves and floor space into ad placements that are priced per store, per day or per campaign and targeted by store, day and hour. eMarketer expects US in-store retail media ad spending to climb 33.1% in 2026, based on its December 2025 forecast (eMarketer, Jan 2026). Across the wider category, the IAB's September 2026 outlook update projects US commerce media spend to grow 13.6% this year, up from the 12.1% it projected in January (IAB, Sep 2026).

Store formats have advanced quickly, and the IAB's in-store measurement framework names the gap brands now ask retailers to close. In its words, in-store media is advancing through "QR-enabled screens, digital endcaps, smart displays, in-store audio," but "one thing hasn't kept pace: measurement," and adoption has been slow because of "operational complexity, inconsistent standards, and a lack of comparability across networks" (IAB, Dec 2025). A retailer that reports verified plays and store-level sales results answers that concern directly, and brands budget more readily for a network that can show them.

How in-store is priced and targeted. In-store inventory is priced by place and time, as a cost per store, per day or per campaign tied to store count and flight length, because most store estates lack the sensor density needed to count individual impressions. Targeting follows the same logic. A placement chooses which stores, which days and which hours, such as a coffee brand on weekday mornings or a snack brand on weekend afternoons. Analog placements belong in the same booking: floor decals, standees, wobblers, food demos and end caps carry the trade budgets brands already spend in stores. The Osmos guide to how retailers monetize in-store traffic covers pricing models in depth.

How the channel differs by vertical. In grocery, chillers, end caps and checkout screens carry the most brand demand, and the trip converts within minutes. In pharmacy, the waiting area and the front of the store hold attention for longer. In home improvement and DIY, aisle screens and project displays reach a shopper who is comparing products on the spot. In quick-service restaurants with their own premises, point-of-purchase media (menu boards, counter screens and pickup areas) carries the chain's own promotions and partner brands' offers; the best point-of-purchase setup for a QSR is one where those placements are booked and reported like any other inventory, by restaurant and by hour.

Comparing in-store vendors. Retailers often compare screen networks and digital signage software, such as Terraboost and Broadsign, when they plan an in-store program. Compare them on who owns the screens and the advertiser relationship, whether analog placements can be booked alongside digital ones, how proof of play and store-level sales results reach the brand, and whether the in-store inventory can be packaged with the retailer's onsite and offsite placements. The Osmos guide to in-store digital screens and DOOH covers screen formats and measurement in depth, and the guide to the future of in-store monetization looks at where the channel is heading.

Osmos In-Store connects a retailer's existing screens, electronic shelf labels and POS systems with no new capex to start, lets the retailer pilot in a few stores before rolling out the fleet, and manages analog placements through Physical Media as bookable inventory next to screens, with Footfall Analytics targeting by store, city, zone or aisle.

Which custom ad formats work across verticals?

Custom ad formats work in every vertical because they let a retailer build a unit that only it can offer, price it at a premium and capture brands' awareness budgets. Listing ads already look like part of the results they sit in, so the custom unit worth building is a differentiated, high-impact unit designed for the retailer's own pages.

• Grocery: a recipe or meal-planning module on a category page that a brand sponsors for a season, with its products in the basket button.
• Pharmacy and health: a seasonal wellness hub, such as a cold-and-flu or allergy page, sponsored by one brand per season within the category's claims rules.
• Beauty: a launch takeover that carries a new product's video, shades and reviews on launch day.
• Fashion: an editorial edit or look-book that a brand sponsors around a drop.
• Food delivery and quick commerce: a homepage or category-page unit for a new menu item or a limited-time product.
• Electronics and DIY: a project planner or buying guide sponsored by a brand in the category.

Creative advice applies to the formats where brands upload an asset: display, video, sponsored brand units, custom formats and offsite placements. Listing ads assemble from the product listing, so the lever there is listing quality. Every format a brand pays for also needs a clear label. The US Federal Trade Commission's guidance is that an ad "shouldn't suggest or imply to consumers that it's anything other than an ad," and it lists "Ad," "Advertisement," "Paid Advertisement" and "Sponsored Advertising Content" among the terms consumers are likely to understand (FTC). A retailer that labels custom units clearly protects shopper trust and keeps the format's premium.

Osmos Custom Formats inherit the retailer's design system, with its fonts, spacing, colors and components, and run on the same ad server, auction and reporting as the rest of the onsite suite; the retailer can compose a format in a visual builder or brief the spec and have Osmos design and ship it. Retailers that want to add brands from outside their category can run them through Osmos Non-endemic Ads, on the same workflow as endemic campaigns.

How is attribution proved in each vertical?

A grocery or food delivery conversion lands inside the retailer's app within minutes, a beauty or fashion conversion lands across sessions and weeks, and an in-store conversion lands at the till.

For these numbers to compare, a brand has to see the same window and the same counting rules across the retailer's onsite, offsite and in-store reports. A new-to-brand buyer is new to the advertiser's brand, and can be a loyal weekly shopper at the retailer who is trying that brand for the first time. The Osmos closed-loop attribution deep dive covers how Walmart, Amazon and Instacart report results.

On Osmos, offsite conversions are deduplicated at SKU level across every channel, with attribution windows configurable per channel, for example 7, 14 or 30-day click-through, and Osmos Brand Lift Study shows advertisers the upper-funnel impact that ROAS misses; Osmos Incrementality, for holdout-based lift, is in early access.

Which retail media networks lead each vertical, and what do brands benchmark them on?

The commerce media network with the best ROAS for advertisers differs by vertical, because return on ad spend depends on the category's margin and on how each network counts a conversion. The best-rated retail media networks in 2026, by the brands that use them, are Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Instacart and Walgreens, according to the Path to Purchase Institute's ratings, which surveyed 166 professionals at CPG brand organizations about 21 networks (P2PI, Jan 2026).

Those ratings score networks on eight dimensions: targeting effectiveness, measurement capabilities, ROI, data sharing, sales growth, creative freedom, traffic-driving capabilities and, new in 2026, self-service capabilities. A retailer building a network can read them as the scorecard its brand partners already use, and as a list of where it can compete.

What "transparent measurement and reporting" means to brands. Brands looking for the commerce media networks with the most transparent measurement and reporting want the attribution window and counting rules stated up front, SKU-level results they can reconcile with their own sales data, and the same report format across channels. Measurement is one of the eight P2PI dimensions, and it is where a smaller network can match a large one, because transparency depends on how a network reports.

What CPG ad networks have in common. CPG brands (consumer packaged goods, such as food, drinks and household products) spend most of their retail media budgets with grocery, pharmacy, mass merchant and delivery networks, because those networks hold the purchase data on frequent baskets. A retailer in any of those verticals is already on a CPG brand's plan; the brand's decision is how much budget it moves there.

How should a retailer that runs several verticals choose its retail media platform?

A retailer that runs several verticals should choose a retail media platform that runs every format and channel its categories need under the retailer's own brand, so an advertiser onboards once and buys and reports across every category from the same wallet. A general merchant with grocery, beauty and electronics aisles, or a group that runs several banners, otherwise ends up running a separate ad stack per category, and brands that buy across categories meet a different process in each.

Osmos tests a multi-vertical retail media platform on these points:

1. Format breadth. Product Ads, display, video and custom formats from one ad server, so the grocery search floor, the beauty video layer and the fashion editorial unit run on the same auction.
2. Channel coverage. Onsite, offsite and in-store in one system, with food delivery and other store-less businesses able to run onsite and offsite alone.
3. In-store pricing by place and time. Booking by store, day and campaign, with analog placements alongside screens.
4. One advertiser workflow. Self-serve buying, wallets and billing that let a brand onboard once and fund campaigns across every vertical.
5. Measurement per vertical. Attribution windows and proof methods that can differ by category while the report format stays the same.
6. Multi-banner support. Separate storefronts, rate cards and brand identities under one operations layer.

The Osmos multi-banner retail media network guide covers the last test in depth, and the guide to how marketplaces build their own ad platform covers the build route.

Osmos meets those tests with apps a retailer switches on one at a time: Onsite for the formats, Offsite for audience extension on the retailer's own seat, In-Store for the store estate, and Orchestration, where Brand Self Serve, BYO Media Channels, Inventory Studio and Wallets and Billing let an advertiser onboard once and buy and report from the same wallet across every vertical the retailer runs. Retailers that want to see how a multi-vertical network runs on Osmos can explore the Osmos platform or request a demo, and the Osmos guide to first-party data in retail media covers the targeting layer every vertical shares.

Frequently asked questions

How should a retailer split revenue goals across onsite, offsite and in-store when it runs several verticals?

Each vertical starts with the channel where its shoppers already are. High-frequency categories such as grocery, pharmacy and delivery earn first from onsite search and listings, because the inventory exists the day the network launches. Higher-value categories such as fashion and electronics add offsite and CTV earlier, because their brands spend more on reach before the purchase. Stores come in as the booking and reporting process matures, starting with a pilot group of stores. Review the split each quarter against the incremental results each channel shows, and keep food delivery and other store-less businesses to onsite and offsite.

Which vertical should a new retail media network launch first?

Launch with the category that combines the most search traffic with the most brands already in a trading relationship with the retailer, which for most general merchants is grocery or household essentials. Those brands already hold trade budgets with the retailer, they understand listing ads, and weekly trips give them a result to read within the first month. A specialist retailer launches with its own category and adds non-endemic advertisers once its onsite inventory is filled.

Should a retailer build its own retail media network or join an existing one?

A retailer that runs one vertical and has a small shopper base can join a larger network's program to start earning quickly, at the cost of control over pricing and brand relationships. A retailer with several verticals, a store estate or its own loyalty program earns more over time by running a network under its own brand, because it keeps the yield, sets its own rate card and owns every advertiser relationship. A retailer with a large engineering team can also build every component in-house.

Are retail media dynamics in India different from the US and Europe?

Yes, mainly because of quick commerce and app-first shopping. Delivery-led platforms are a large share of the market: Eternal, which runs Zomato and Blinkit, grew its B2C net order value 54% year over year to INR 31,120 crore in the quarter to June 2026 (Eternal, Jul 2026). Quick commerce runs from dark stores, so ad targeting has to follow what each dark store has in stock at that moment, and frequent small orders make day-part pacing more important than in Western grocery.

Can a retailer in one vertical earn from brands outside it?

Yes. Non-endemic advertisers, brands that do not appear on the retailer's shelves, such as banks, telecom providers, travel firms and automotive brands, will pay to reach a retailer's audience in context: a home improvement retailer's shoppers for a home insurance offer, a pharmacy's shoppers for a health insurer. Non-endemic demand works best in display, video, custom formats and offsite, where brands upload their own creative, and it needs category-exclusion rules so that non-endemic ads never compete with the retailer's own range.

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